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Case · C-124

USS Jackson 2023: the “Tic Tac” that, according to a petty officer, emerged from the sea

W-291 training area, Pacific Ocean off southern California · United States · Feb 15, 2023

Between air and water Military witnesses Video Radar

Unexplained

What happened
On the evening of February 15, 2023, around 19:15 Pacific time, aboard the littoral combat ship USS Jackson (LCS-6), in the W-291 training area off southern California, petty officer Alexandro Wiggins tracked a radar contact and then saw from the bridge wing, about 7-8 nautical miles away, a luminous “Tic Tac”-shaped object which, according to his sworn testimony of September 9, 2025, came out of the ocean and joined three others; the four vanished together with an almost instantaneous acceleration, with no boom or visible exhaust, and immediately afterward the radar tracks ceased. Answering questions, Wiggins specified that at night and at that distance it was difficult to distinguish an object on the horizon from one emerging from the water and that the emergence from the sea is his own belief, not documented by images. The ship's SAFIRE thermal sensor recorded two of the objects: the video, with time and position overlaid, was released on April 8, 2025 on Jeremy Corbell and George Knapp's Weaponized podcast. Wiggins stated that the full footage was handed to Congress; the Navy does not appear to have published it.
Proposed explanation
No official assessment is known. According to Wiggins, to his knowledge, there were no investigations or after-action reports and no agency questioned the crew. According to an exchange posted on X by the journalist Steven Greenstreet and reported on Metabunk, on April 16, 2025, Pentagon spokeswoman Susan Gough said that AARO had no record of the episode and invited anyone who knew anything about it to report it. Mick West (Metabunk) believes that the video resembles that of the 2014 Chilean Navy helicopter (C-077), that is, a distant aircraft; on the forum, after reconstructing the ship's position from the on-screen overlay, some aircraft flying in the direction of the shot were pointed out, without a definitive identification. Marik von Rennenkampff, consulted by KLAS, says instead that he found no aircraft compatible with the line of sight. The emergence from the water does not appear in the published video.
Words of the document
A self-luminous tic-tac-shaped object emerged from the ocean

Official documents

  1. Restoring Public Trust Through UAP Transparency and Whistleblower Protection – Hearing, Serial No. 119-44 (testimonianza di Alexandro Wiggins) · House of Representatives – Government Publishing Office · Sep 9, 2025

Sources

  1. Transcript of the September 9, 2025 hearing (GovInfo), Wiggins's statement and answers (primary source)
  2. KLAS-TV (George Knapp), “Navy crew reports dramatic encounter eerily similar to iconic 'Tic Tac' incident” (April 9, 2025, via Yahoo) (press, pro-disclosure)
  3. Metabunk, “The USS Jackson "Tic-tac" UAP” (discussion from April 8, 2025, with position and time derived from the video) (analysis, skeptical)
  4. Metabunk, same discussion, page 2: Greenstreet–Gough exchange of April 16, 2025 (“AARO has no record of this alleged UAP incident”) (analysis, skeptical)

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